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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25364323">If You Won't Go Under</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia'>nagia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Birthday Amnesty Agreement Fic, F/F, F/M, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel Fix-It, and other questions yuffie does not ponder, does time travel really fix anything at all though?, is there a material difference between philosophies of predestination and free will?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 09:00:49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>8,296</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25364323</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuffie Kisaragi's life is going pretty swell right before the bullet hits. It gets a lot less swell -- and a lot more like, "Sweet surfer-chomping Leviathan, this <i>again</i>?"  -- when she wakes up in a tree near Junon, and there's a green glow of eight Mako reactors on the horizon.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aerith Gainsborough &amp; Yuffie Kisaragi, Aerith Gainsborough/Tifa Lockhart, Aerith Gainsborough/Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife, Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife, Yuffie Kisaragi &amp; Reeve Tuesti, Yuffie Kisaragi &amp; Tifa Lockhart, Yuffie Kisaragi/Vincent Valentine</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. prelude</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Once again, this is a Birthday Amnesty Agreement fic.  (What can I say, time travel tends to be one of my self-indulgent ideas.)  No guarantees that there will be more than this, though there might.  Also no guarantees that any of this is any good -- I've been told by a few that my Yuffie is too serious, possibly because I've been writing Shinomori Aoshi and Zevran Aranai for too long.</p><p>Also, the standard 'Nagia writes a time travel fix it' warnings apply: things will certainly happen differently, but 'different' does not always mean 'better,' in the end.  Also, I'm so proud, I've made it through 8k words without anybody straight up vomiting.   <i>It's a miracle.</i></p><p>Content warning for temporary character death in the prologue.  If you don't want to read Yuffie violently karking it, skip to the next chapter forthwith.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The probably really weird part was that Yuffie had time to think: <i>dying isn't like I thought it would be.</i>  Admittedly, she was thinking about eleven things at once, not so much chronologically, but more like her brain went "just vent everything, we can sort it out if there's ever a later."</p><p>But, like, the thing that was going to kill her happened really fast.  So fast that she almost didn't know she was trading ambiguously deadly circumstances for yeppo, hundred percent certain death.  And with freaking Cloud of all people.</p><p>She did know, of course.  She'd learned to make those calculations before the Deepground stuff or even before the larval-proto-Sephiroth problem.</p><p>It happened like this: somebody wanted to murder Cloud in the heart over something about the Geostigma cure, because aiming for hearts is such a <i>smart</i> thing to do when you have a sniper rifle with a laser sight.  And also because obviously Cloud controlled who got the Geostigma cure and who didn't and how quickly any of it happened and whether people knew to go to the abandoned church in the ruins of Sector 5. (Psyche!  Doyy.)  </p><p>Vincent wasn't there.  Tifa was too far away and also <i>not an option</i>.  She wasn't about to let somebody murder Cloud; it would make too many people sad.  She might even be one of them.  And this line of thought didn't even take <i>seconds</i>.  It was like she saw that little red dot and immediately started thinking all of this, like a Time materia had sped up her thoughts to match the speed of the world. </p><p>So, in those last few milliseconds before Mr. Bad Assassin pulled the trigger, she raised the Conformer and stepped in front of Cloud.  The glittery specialness of the massive shuriken spooked the sniper somehow.  Or maybe they were just a fucking idiot.  Or maybe they just wanted her out of the way so they could rack the slide, take aim again, and kill Cloud in the face.</p><p>Point was, instead of hitting Yuffie in the throat or jaw, which was roughly where Cloud's heart would have been, something slammed into the right side of her chest.  It sent her spinning away from him.  A hole burned in her chest and her breathing felt weird, but Yuffie was a lot more concerned with the fact that after she spun, she flopped almost bonelessly to the ground and couldn't feel her feet.</p><p>Because, seriously, what the hell?  Where had they gone?</p><p>Yuffie tilted her head enough to look at herself.  There was a horrible dark blotch spreading on her shirt.  It looked like it was spreading from the far right side, but a little lower than her breast.  So, probably her lung, then.</p><p>She did still have feet, though.  That was good; the bullet hadn't, like, ripped her in half somehow.  She was pretty sure that could happen.  She'd seen people torn apart by gunfire during the war.</p><p>This, too, Yuffie thought all in maybe a couple of seconds.  Somebody screaming something called her attention away from the fact that she was looking at a lot of blood and she couldn't feel her feet, or even her lungs very far down.</p><p>She was pretty sure that the bullet might not have torn her all the way apart, but it had for sure fucked up her spine.</p><p>"Quit yelling," she snapped, because talk about annoying.  And then she added, "Run, you stupid spikey-headed idiot," and then she was pretty much out of air.  She tried to suck more into her lungs, and she watched her chest rise — </p><p>But not all of it was rising, she was pretty sure.  She definitely didn't feel air coming all the way in.  She wasn't getting enough of it.</p><p>"Go," she said, and it came out very quiet.  She wheezed,  "S'okay."  Another attempt at a deep breath, but it was all wet now, and there just wasn't enough space for air to go.  "Go," she said again, and she could barely hear herself.</p><p>She wasn't going to be able to say anything else.</p><p>Something touched her cheek.  Fingers, she realized, a gloved palm.  They were warm, and that was nice, because her face felt cold.</p><p>Dying wasn't at all what she'd expected.  But it was okay, or it would have been, if she could just stop freezing.  And it was like the colder she got, the grayer her vision went.  Yuffie lay in the encroaching dark, wishing she could tap her fingers as she waited for the end, or even hug herself to deal with the cold.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Any, uh, explosions?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Yuffie learned to climb and fall and roll so early that she had stopped having those weird dreams where you feel yourself fall, and then have to jerk to to wake up, by the time she was twelve.  So when she suddenly has feet and legs and lungs again, and the distinct sensation that she's falling from a height, she listens to it.</p><p>She doesn't need to see to know that she needs to land with either the soles of her feet or her shoulders touching down first.  She doesn't even need to really know what the hell is happening to make sure she hits the ground like a ninja and not like squashed tomatoes.</p><p>The impact shudders through her, feet first and climbing up to her knees and thighs and the rest of her.  She'd been unaware enough that she'd landed in a crouch, legs shoulder-width apart.</p><p>And that's about the time where she stops and thinks: wait, feet?  Because the last thing she remembers, she doesn't have feet anymore.  Or, well, she does, they're still attached, but they're useless because some dickhead sniper severed her spine with a bullet from far enough range he'd needed a laser scope.  She tries to imagine Vincent willingly using a laser scope and can't, so maybe that sniper just sucked at his job, like, a lot.</p><p>Just as Yuffie's preparing to get seriously worked up about the feet issue, she notices the everything else problem.  Like, for example, the fact that it's frigging night time, and she'd died — that's what that had been, dying, no point running from what that was — during broad daylight.  Or for example the fact that she's in a forest, rather than Edge, or that she has a totally different Materia set up than the one she distinctly remembers picking out.</p><p>Or like the fact that she's wearing the Four Point and her arm guard, rather than the Conformer.</p><p>Yuffie blinks to herself, then crouches again.  She reaches out to scoop up some of the dirt and leaves littering the ground beneath her, and rubs them through her fingers.  The scent of pine-sap hits her first, and she drops a few needles so she can get the feel of the dirt.</p><p>Yep, that's definitely Junon area grit.  Yuffie spares a moment to stare up at the tree she'd fallen out of.  She doesn't see as well in the dark as Vincent and Cloud can, so she reaches up, hand questing along the bark.</p><p>Her fingertips trace the character for 'Chocobo' and that's pretty much that.  She remembers the signs she'd carved in a tree of every forest she'd wandered through, just as a way to keep track of where she'd been.  There had only been four characters in all, though she'd carved a few of them twice or more.  Pig, Rat, Rabbit, and then, last of all —</p><p>These gouges in the pine bark are fresh, only barely sapped over. It's the freaking year of the Chocobo.  She's either sixteen or twenty-eight, and given what she's wearing and carrying, she's not about to bet on twenty-eight.</p><p>Wow it's kind of amazing how much she really really does <i>not</i> want to be sixteen again.  She'd really liked that extra inch she'd grown.</p><p>For fuck's sake, Yuffie thinks.  She reaches down to the Carbon bangle she's wearing, checking for a Chocobo Lure.  It's the most useless fucking Materia on or off Leviathan's green ocean, but she's about to need —</p><p>Goddamnit.  She digs in her pockets, but nope, no Chocobo Lure there, either.  No other Materia at all, in fact, and that's going to be a bit of a problem.  That means she's got a grand total of five materia on her person, and that is just not okay.</p><p>Alright, what does she have?  Okay, mastered Steal.  Mastered Throw.  Mastered Heal (thank Watergod for that) and mastered Lightning and Time.  No Enemy Skill, which sucks, because Trine and Fire Breath are always useful; same for Sleepel Spume.  No Taunt, no Magnify, no Elemental, no Leviathan Summon —</p><p>She'd been wearing Taunt.  Is that why laser-sights-for-brains shot her in the lung?  Or was he just really that horribly, ridiculously bad at his job?  Like, worse than the Turks?</p><p>No.  She's not thinking about that, because as far as she can tell, she hasn't been shot in the lung.  Which means Cloud is probably fine.  Probably.</p><p>Shit, she's gonna have to check and see if AVALANCHE is okay.  She touches the carved character again and thinks back to what she can remember of the stories they'd told her when she joined up.  If she's really freaking sixteen again.  If she's not just kupo-nuts, and right now that's not a bet she wants to place.</p><p>Might as well start heading toward Kalm, she decides.  Cloud and Tifa will be in it.  Or, if she's not crazy, near it.</p><hr/><p>The forests near Junon are thick enough, treetops woven together almost as densely as Gongaga's, that the forest is cave-like at night.  The sky's so bright it almost blinds her when she makes her way out of the woods.  Annoyed and amazed, she shades her eyes and looks up.  She can just barely make out anything at all as her eyes adjust.  The night sky looks almost alien to her now, after three years of not seeing it look like <i>this</i>.  She actually gasps out a soft, "Whoah;" it's like standing on a totally different planet.</p><p>That green-blue ring of fire lurking above the mountains is big enough that all eight reactors must still be intact.  And that is just, wow.  Wow, not okay.  She's starting to feel both less connected to reality, since sweet All-Holy can this not be real, and more like, crazy as her theory is, it's not wrong.</p><p>She distinctly remembers looking at that aurora and hating everything it meant.  A world with Shinra in it was a world she halfway wanted to tear down.  She still hates the Shinra, but three years of them being gone makes it feel weirdly distant.  Now, when she looks at the blue-green lights dancing in the atmosphere, what she mostly feels is tired.</p><p>No, tired isn't the word for it.  Tired is what she happens to be because she's been hiking for more than two hours after waking up at ass o'clock for no real reason.  What she feels doesn't fit in one word.  It barely fits in, "Do I really have to do this again?"</p><p>Then again, how sure is she that she did it in the first place?</p><p>Yuffie remembers dying and decides that she's pretty damn sure.</p><p>First her left foot, then her right.  One foot in front of the other, she reminds herself, and works hard not to trudge as she makes her way toward the Mythril Mines.  There had been something really big and nasty living beyond them, but she doesn't remember its name, just that it was annoying and actually pretty scary.  Midgarzolom? Midgarsormr?  She can't remember.  Bigass honking snake.  Damn near ate Vincent — chocobo and all — once.</p><p>Yuffie squints, trying to remember how that one had gone.  His bird had been one of those gorgeous Icicle Blacks.  Hardy, not prone to spooking, and fluffy as hell, but not as fast as the Cetra Golds or the Wusheng Greens.  She'd all but left him choking on her dust on the way to Midgar, and close as he'd been following, she thinks he might not have been close enough.  Or maybe she'd thrown something?  Or he'd dropped something?</p><p>Doesn't matter.  If she's really sixteen again, that snake isn't dead and she doesn't have so much as a Kalmian Yellow, which means her life is about to get fabulously uncomfortable.</p><p>Well, once she gets through the Mythril Mines.  And she is not crossing the Mythril Mines at night, nope, nothing doing.  She's done enough ill-advised impromptu caving in her lifetime, and she's going to avoid it until Deepground makes her do it again, thanks.</p><p>Assuming Deepground exists and isn't just an incredibly weird dream she had because her protein bars were spoiled or something.</p><p>Yuffie pitches a tent in some tall grass near the mine entrance and flops down on a bedroll inside it.  It's the last one she has, but if she can cross the Midgar-whatever's swamp tomorrow, she can go buy another Chocobo Lure from the crazy chocobo farmers.  That'll make getting to Kalm by nightfall much easier.</p><p>Something in Yuffie's soul contorts in seething agony at the thought of walking to the chocobo farm and paying out actual money, her own hard-stolen gil, for the single most useless materia on the goddamn planet.  It's not just highway robbery — and she would know highway robbery!  She has <i>been</i> highway robbery! For years at a time! — it's actually worse than that.  It's unholy.  It's obscene.</p><p>She thinks that last word in Nanaki's voice: <i>obscene</i>, with the edge on his consonants and the grit in his vowels.  God, it'd be nice if he were around.  She could use his perspective on this fucking crazy thing that's happened to her.  Also, he's got really soft fur and the "scritch Nanaki behind the ears" thing worked out pretty great for both of them: he got his ears scritched, and she got to pet a giant catdog thing.</p><p>And then she falls asleep, because she's had an incredibly long day, and tomorrow isn't exactly looking <i>shorter</i>.</p><hr/><p>So.  Midgar-thingy's swamp.  Yuffie eyes it, and eyes the suspicious rustling of the long grasses that grow in patchy gray-green clumps. That big stupid snake is in there somewhere, and she doesn't particularly feel like getting eaten alone in a grody-smelling marsh today.  She'll save that experience for, oh, the fifth of Nuh-Uh.</p><p>Almost experimentally, she says, "Grossness."</p><p>No response.  Nothing in the swamp cares.  Doesn't react to sound, notes her genius ninja hindbrain, which sounds suspiciously like Vincent.</p><p>Crap, how did they handle this before?  Besides 'have chocobos.'  That is not a helpful suggestion, sassy teenaged girl front brain, thanks for playing.  Maybe quit while you're ahead.</p><p>Yuffie heads back into the mines and picks up a couple of rocks.  Two smooth, one roughly squarish, and one squat, oblong one that would be a bitch to get any accuracy with if she didn't have her Throw materia. She heads back out, picking her way to the last edges of solid ground, and flings the weirdly-shaped stone almost at random into the marsh.  Grass rustles again.  And she would swear she practically feels the moment the rock touches the ground.</p><p>The monster-sense she'd spent Meteor Crisis developing, with the help of Enemy Skill and a vested interest in not being monster chow, gives a soft little nudge.  That rock cast ripples, and any second now…</p><p>The Midgarzormer arcs through the swamp water, twisting sinuous and fast, Greased Lightning fast, and there's a hiss and a slurping sound as it literally eats the rock.</p><p>"For serious?"</p><p>Mirdgarsully doesn't reply.  </p><p>Well, he eats rocks.  She did not seriously expect him to be a great conversationalist.  Little bit like talking to Cloud when he gets his headaches, really.  Actually, that's probably not fair to Cloud, who, despite all his brain problems, evaluates food on the basis of "is this food" rather than "was this moving a second ago."</p><p>Although now that she thinks of it, she does have questions about his childhood in Nibelheim.  Not questions she wants answered, exactly, but questions.  Kids eat weird stuff, don't they?  She has definitely eaten bugs on a dare.  Did they do that there, too, or was it like a "how many nails can you swallow without dying" contest kind of place?</p><p>She's also avoiding the main problem here, which is Midgarsnake.  Yuffie sighs and takes a minute to jog in place, then does a few jumping jacks, and finishes up with a couple of illusions to stretch herself out and work the kinks out of her back and thighs. Then she casts Haste on herself.  Without the adrenaline rush of a fight, it's a bad idea — even after her mini-workout, her muscles weren't warmed up enough and she can feel the cramps starting already — but it's not like she's swimming in better options, here.</p><p>After that, it's another cast of Haste.  For a solid twenty seconds, she is one hundred percent convinced she can taste the color red.  It doesn't taste like cherries <i>or</i> cinnamon.  It tastes disappointing, mostly, with a gil-coin edge.</p><p>And just to be the bad idea cherry on top of the bad idea shit sundae, Yuffie casts Haste a third time.  Her heart promptly decides to escape her ribcage, beating against it like it's been imprisoned for nineteen years and yearns to break free.  Meanwhile the metal taste is back, and she can feel a faint throb near her eyelids, like a vein near her eye is pulsing.  Something red and hot stabs the back of her skull, starting right where her neck meets her head.</p><p>Fabulous.</p><p>Yuffie tosses a rock at the opposite side of the marsh from her planned entrance and then zings her way out into the long grass.</p><p>Midgarsnakey, momentarily confused, pauses just long enough for her to cast Slow on it, and that gives her enough time to throw her third rock, which clatters enough that it catches the snake's attention.</p><p>There is no time for anything sneakier than that.  Without a chocobo, or the Conformer, her only option is as much speed and as much trickery as she can use simultaneously.</p><p>Rustling as the snake remembers that she's present and that it doesn't like her, but slower rustling.  Yuffie spares a precious second to pump her fist up in excited victory, and then throws her last rock.</p><p>Away goes the Mirdgatwhatsit, that most intelligent of snakes, to once again eat a goddamn rock.</p><p>She leads such a charmed life.  </p><p>But its distraction gives her enough time to get the hell out of the swamp.  She actually trips as she stomps onto dry land, and goes down in an ungainly roll.  When she stands back up, she feels something hot and stinging pour out of her nose, and sighs. Lean her head forward, and deal with the flood? Or lean it backward, and endure the horrible salt-iron slide of her blood down the back of her throat? </p><p>Oh, wait, she's got a Heal materia on her, for once, and this is exactly what low-level Cures are for.  Yuffie closes her eyes and leans her head forward, pressing two fingers in on either side of her nose and focusing on her bangle.  The Cure shears through her, burning as something inside her sinuses knits back together.  Her whole mouth tastes of nosebleed, vinegar, and, weirdest of all, south Wutaian mint.</p><p>How many years has she been using Heal materia?  And she's pretty sure she'll never get used to the weird stuff they even the lowest level Cure spells can make brains do.</p><p>Her heart speeds up at the thought of it and Yuffie slams a fist against her chest.  Of course healing magic didn't touch that.  So, should she use the restless energy and speed her triple-cast of Haste gave her, or does that risk, like, having a heart attack?  No telling.</p><hr/><p>Yuffie heads for the chocobo farm, moving quickly enough that the monsters between her and her destination stay the hell away.  She's pretty sure she's in Fury, at this point, and she kind of relishes the thought of, oh, cutting some monsters to ribbons.  But there are no takers; she makes it to the farm without having to introduce anybody to the Four Point.</p><p>Chocobo Ted or Bill or whatever his name is smiles and shrugs and says, "Oh, a Lure?  You'll have to talk to Boco Billy, over in the barn."</p><p>It kind of feels like an aneurysm, if aneurysms were made of hating any kind of Lure materia, hating the thought of paying <i>money</i> for Chocobo Lure, and having spent years of her life as a materia-stealing thug.  A little pipe in her brain busts open, venting steam.  The world turns vaguely red, and Yuffie almost wonders if maybe that throbbing vein near her eyeball finally popped.</p><p>Chocobo Ted-and-or-Bill goes ghostly pale and raises his hands like they would stop her.</p><p>His hands don't stop her.  She grabs his collar in one fist and yanks him down to face level.</p><p>"Like hell am I paying your scam artist grandson actual <i>money</i> for the single most useless materia near or far from Leviathan's green ocean, do you hear me, old man?"  Her heart is pounding, her head feels like a rotating speaker for a tsunami siren and also like the tsunami siren noise going off, which is a hell of a thing for a head to feel like, and her veins pulse to the rhythm of a Gongagan jungle talker, which she has never heard.  It's kind of a magical moment.</p><p>Out of <i>nowhere</i> she feels all the blood rush into her head, or maybe out of it.  She feels her face do something weird and she sways on her feet, releasing the old man's shirt and taking a step back.</p><p>"It's obscene," she says, only it comes out a lot more slurred and lot less like how Nanaki says it.  And then she pitches backwards.</p><hr/><p>Yuffie is getting pretty tired of weird shit happening and then passing out.  She considers lodging this complaint with the universe, but knowing the Watergod and the All-Holy, that would do her negative good.  Like, that could actually make her life suck more.</p><p>They're not big on whiners.  She's not either, unless she's the one doing the whining, so it's not like she can blame them, exactly.</p><p>Somebody tucked her into a little wooden room that smells like gysahl greens.  She takes a moment to listen and hears the scratch-peck-scrabble and occasional soft 'wark' or 'kweh' of the chocobos.  So, she's in a little room in the barn, then.</p><p>The same barn she'd refused to go into.</p><p>The headache hits just as she's putting her head in her hands to curse herself for being a dumbass.  It's a lightning strike right to the back of her head.  It throbs around the edges with the kind of neon white-hot pain that leaves her fighting not to throw up.</p><p>And, as if her movements woke up the rest of her body, she becomes abruptly aware of the fact that her every single limb and digit feels like a knotted-up noodle of exhaustion and pain.</p><p>"Well, now, you seem a touch calmer," says Chocobo Ted-or-Bill.</p><p>Yuffie just sighs.  "Uh-huh.  How much is my stay gonna cost me?"</p><p>"Looks to me like you got yourself a hasteover," is Chocobo Ted's brilliant reply.  "The kind of hasteover you get if you, say, cast a dangerous Time spell on yourself a bunch of times trying to get past the Midgar Zolom.  Am I about right?"</p><p>She doesn't lift her head from her hands.  "So what if you are?"</p><p>"Well, it would go a long way toward explaining your little outburst earlier.  Sick people can do all manner of strange things, and anybody who knows what's what knows that Haste can make a temper go real sour, even on an ordinary day."</p><p>Is he looking for reasons to forgive her, or is he looking for reasons not to radio the sheriff over from Kalm?  Given this guy's scamming grandson, she kind of wonders if they're the same thing.</p><p>And then Boco Billy's voice pipes up in just the right pitch to make her want to stab something in both her eardrums.  "For the low, low price of 1500 gil, we'll give you a tranquilizer and let you sleep the hasteover off in here!  And for another 500 gil, you can sleep in the deluxe suite!"</p><p>"Our guestroom," Chocobo Ted says, tired.  "And no, Billy, we ain't chargin' no extra gil for that.  Can you stand, little miss?"</p><p>Yuffie considers asking him just who he thinks he's calling little.  And then she remembers how close to Midgar she is, how close to the Shinra — who don't like the Wusheng half as much as they like Ancients; they have <i>uses</i> for Ancients that don't need them to be dangling from a rope just outside of town — and thinks better of it.</p><p>"Probably," she says, and grunts in pain as Chocobo Ted helps her stand.</p><p>She sleeps the day away in a little guest room covered in gingham.  There's a stetson hat on the wall.  Also a cow skull.  Bull skull.  Whatever, it's long and weird and has horns and creepy eyeholes.  She only notices it every single time she wakes up, but given that she doesn't do that often and she's back asleep within minutes, it's not so bad.</p><p>The bed's soft, at least.  Softer than the ground.</p><p>Nowhere on this whole damn planet would she pay 1500g for a tranquilizer and somebody's guest room, and the indignity of that — once again, she has literally been a highway robber; this is just infuriating — rankles.  Still, she manages to mostly forget until she wakes up the next morning.</p><p>She barters with Chocobo Ted, who is great at seeming reasonable but has the shark eyes of a con artist, while Boco Billy is off in the barn.  It's a surprisingly civilized haggling session, given that it happens over cowboy coffee, biscuits smeared with butter and jam, and sausages.  Yuffie eats two of the sausages because she can, nearly licking her fingers at the salt-sweet pork taste.</p><p>Her stomach makes a vaguely ominous noise, but she ignores that to keep pushing ideas back and forth with Chocobo Ted.</p><p>"Alright, alright, I'll throw in a tent and a Chocobo Lure," he eventually says.  "But <i>one</i> tent, and one of our new materia, alright?  Anything else and I'd be scammin' myself."</p><p>"Done," she says, and offers a hand to shake.  Before they can stand up from the table, which will conclude business and require her to get the hell out of dodge, she asks, "By the way, any news from Midgar?  Any, uh, explosions?  Their reactors still running okay?"</p><p>Chocobo Ted narrows his eyes at her.  "You're Wusheng, ain't you?"</p><p>"Yes," she replies, and keeps her head up high.  Never let 'em see you sweat, after all.  And especially never let them know you expect them to turn into violently anti-Wusheng shitheads.  Act like it's all reasonable, like it's all normal, and they'll probably keep their cool.</p><p>"Word has it Wutai is fundin' AVALANCHE to mess with the Shinra.  But I haven't heard a word about any explosions or anything.  Far as I know, the power runs great."</p><p>Sure, the power runs great, a voice that sounds kind of like Barret says in the back of her brain.  And it'll keep running great until we've gone and poisoned all the mako on the planet, and how are we supposed to get more?  What will we do then?</p><p>"Good to hear it," she says instead.  Always nice to know that you didn't lose a war for nothing.</p><p>A lot less nice to hear that you stopped freaking Meteorfall and evacuated the city for nothing.  Once again, the feeling that settles into her bones doesn't seem to fit any single word.  There's resignation and annoyance and a low, throbbing anger that coils in her gut.</p><p>Midgar is still there.  Still waiting for Sephiroth and Meteor and the proto-larva-Sepiroth people and goddamned freaking Deepground.</p><p>Fuck Sephiroth.  Fuck the Shinra.  And especially fuck that guy who shot her.</p><hr/><p>Her brand new otherwise completely useless materia means that she has a ride within the hour.  Yuffie makes her way toward Kalm.  There's still a faint burn in her thighs when the bird, tentatively named Scratchy Toes, runs and she has to post in the saddle, but mostly her legs are okay.  Every now and then, when they're moving slowly, she leans forward and ruffles her fingers through the feathers on the side of Scratchy Toes' head.</p><p>She notices Midgar more the closer she gets to Kalm.  By the time she's an hour's ride away, the city blots out the horizon.  Soon, it blots out  the sky.  She looks up — and up, and up — and there is only Midgar, with its sprawling slums and its steel construction and its smog and its reactor towers.  It rises up from behind Kalm and makes the closer town look tiny.</p><p>And at the top of it all, at the center of it all, is Shinra Headquarters.</p><p>Three years that hellish eyesore has been rubble.  Never in all her life had she been this close to the city itself.  Not when it was alive.  Dread twists around in her stomach, looping and swirling and then tying itself into a nice, comfortable knot.</p><p>Somewhere underneath that tower — maybe as much as a mile deep — there's a little girl one of her best friends died looking for, and a whole fuckton of monsters. </p><p>Yuffie pushes past Kalm.</p><p>The sun sits low over the horizon, casting red and orange shadows that flicker and flinging strange reflections off metal, by the time she reaches the entrance to one of the slums.  The monorail — labelled "To The Plate," which she guesses must be the top — stopped running a couple of hours before.  So she keeps going: she dismounts the chocobo and leads her into the slums and shanty-towns.</p><p>Scratchy Toes offers a tentative 'kweh' as they wind their way through Sector 5.  Yuffie puts down a few hedgehog pies, and Toes actually stomps at one hard enough to send it running away.</p><p>Lucky miss, too.  Those huge, clawed feet could have flattened it into so much gross slime.</p><p>She's just stepping into town proper, toward what looks like a train station,  when a voice calls out, "Evenin', little lady!"</p><p>Yuffie stops moving and turns.  She sizes up the guy calling out — bandana, leather vest, cowboy hat, huge shiny belt buckle, <i>no weapons</i>, what the hell — and then darts a glance around the area to make sure nobody's trying to sneak one past her.</p><p>But nobody is.  How weird.</p><p>"Evening," she says, since it certainly is that.</p><p>Yelling guy eyeballs Scratchy Toes.  "Your friend there looks like a good bird.  Is she bred or wild caught?"</p><p>Oh.  Okay.  She knows where this is going now.  "Wild caught her this morning, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Farm's Yellow was in her.  She's really tame for just a day of working."</p><p>"I'm one of Chocobo Sam's stablehands," the man says, nodding eagerly.  His eyes never leave Toes.  "And she looks like she'd be a good fit in our stable.  Take people where they wanted to go."</p><p>"Uh, okay, how much are you offering?"</p><p>At that, the stablehand looks sheepish.  "Sorry, ma'am, I just meant to say you'll want to talk to Chocobo Sam, outside Wall Market.  I can't buy her off you.  Would if I could, though."</p><p>Oh, for the love of.  Yuffie nods, refusing to let this idiot see her roll her eyes, and keeps on moving.  She offers a half-hearted, "Yeah, I'll think about it," as she goes.</p><p>She's pretty sure she doesn't fool him, but she's also pretty sure she doesn't care.</p><hr/><p>The funny bit?  She actually does end up talking to Chocobo Sam.  The trip between Sector 5 and what remains of Sector 6 — which looks way too much like one of the shantytowns from home; her throat closes up for a second and she has to look away from all the lanterns — had been surprisingly quick.  People had all but dodged out of her way as she led Scratchy Toes around town.</p><p>But not all of the stares had been aimed at her bird.  Some of them had been directed at her, and they'd been the kind of unfriendly she hasn't missed.</p><p>It's enough to make a girl wish she had her hidden boot knife.  And also her Enemy Skill; nothing makes people remember their manners quite like turning into frogs.  Except maybe being on fire, and Enemy Skill is definitely good for making that happen.</p><p>Time to just become another face in the crowd, anyway.  Which is where Chocobo Sam comes in.</p><p>"Scratchy Toes isn't for sale," Yuffie says very slowly and probably not without some exasperation leaking into her voice.</p><p>Sam's reply is an unimpressed, "Then I ain't at all sure what we got to talk about, darlin'."</p><p>"I'm willing to rent her to you.  Gimme three-quarters off whatever you'd charge me to board her, and you can use her in your weirdo chocobo livery stable thing."</p><p>He actually stares at her for a second and then shakes his head.  "Nothin' weird about chocobo carriages, little girl.  But you might be onto a deal."</p><p>"Huh, we just use people for that, where I'm from."  Chocobos had been for battle, back when having a cavalry had made any kind of a difference.  "Ready to shake on it?"  No way he'll be ready, but she wants to push this along.</p><p>The key to running any kind of scam is very, very simple: don't let 'em <i>think</i>.  It's a tactic that has mostly worked well for her.</p><p>"<i>One</i> quarter," Sam returns.</p><p>And that's where Yuffie grins.  "Half."</p><p>"Done."  This time they actually do shake.  "She's a fine bird, though, especially for wild caught.  They're usually skinny and a little reckless.  She's got some meat on her — and some caution to boot."</p><p>Yuffie ruffles her fingers through the feathers at the back of Toes' head, near the bridle.  Toes does her a solid and doesn't immediately remove her hand at the wrist.  "Yeah, I lucked out with Scratchy Toes here."</p><p>If the name amuses the hell out of Sam, he doesn't say anything about it.  Instead he just nods and watches her leave.  Scratchy Toes lets out a soft, warbling wark of protest as she goes, but Yuffie just walks away.</p><p>There's probably no better place for a chocobo in this city, and she's willing to do a lot of things for Cloud and Tifa, but sleep in a stable isn't one of them.  Well, not yet, anyway.  She hopes that they have time to get Toes back, when they eventually have to leave Midgar.  She remembers stories about riding in a truck, with Cloud on a motorcycle cutting Shinra thugs down left, right, and center, and she gets the impression it wasn't a planned exit.</p><p>Next up, Sector 7.  She walks through a huge gate, ready to head toward Seventh Heaven and try to get an ear on what AVALANCHE is doing.  She's only barely past the intersection after the town's entrance when something starts rumbling like a Quake spell.  Yuffie actually feels the ground vibrate under her boots, and she turns around.</p><p>The fucking gate is in the process of closing.  How <i>annoying</i>.  Is she stuck on this side of that stupid wall now?</p><p>Probably until morning.  Although it's weird, with all those lanterns and strung lights, she'd have expected the place to do most of its business at night.</p><p>Yuffie gives up on that train of thought, instead tracking through the dusty streets of Sector 7.  There's so much corrugated metal, so much rust.  Almost none of the wood has any paint on it.  All the art she sees is red or white graffiti, which doesn't bother her, exactly, but Edge had been a home to a million billion tiny little art pieces, hiding away.  Plenty of it had been street art, people using spray paint to turn industrial brick and metal into something out of a waking dream, or to make a point.  But there had been fabric stuff, too, and sculptures.</p><p>She sees none of that here.  Just sheet metal, twisted rebar, and dingy boards.  The city around her looks <i>tired</i> more than anything else.  It's the ground down, ground in sort of poverty, the kind people don't escape without more luck than anybody wants to admit.</p><p>But the art didn't come from nowhere.  If there were artists in Edge, there are artists in the slums.  This isn't just a place to eke out a living; it's a place where people live.  She takes in a deep breath — wow, what a wonderful rotten egg smell; seriously, <i>who thought Midgar was a good idea?</i> And why couldn't she have woken up in time to punch them in the face? — and reminds herself of that.  And that, good or bad, whether she likes it or not, this place will be gone soon enough.</p><p>Seventh Heaven actually has stain on the wood it's constructed out of.  It has a sign, a big one, the kind you can see from more than a few feet away.  Music drifts out from a record player and people gather on its steps and porch.  A bunch are eating, and almost all of them are swigging drinks from bottles and cans.</p><p>So Tifa really never has let her patrons take her breakables outside.  Interesting to know.</p><p>Yuffie ascends the stairs and pushes the double doors open.</p><p>It's like a lesson in deja vu.</p><p>The tables.  The sweeping expanse of bar.  The matching stools — and how proud Tifa and Barret must have been of that — and the jukebox in the corner.  Hell, the <i>dartboard</i>.  None of it could be exactly the same as the Seventh Heaven she knows, but it's like walking into an old memory, enough alike that she's fooled at first.  The changes fit almost into the dustier, more threadbare parts of her memory.</p><p>More than a few people have gathered at the tables and the bar is almost totally out of space for a girl to get a drink.  Only one person isn't crammed elbow-to-elbow with anybody else.</p><p>Yep, that's the Cloud she knows.  </p><p>She can easily remember the days when he'd been one of the more handsome men she'd ever met — and easily one of the most intimidating.  She might be shit scared of Sephiroth and Vincent can give Cloud a run for his money in all aspects of "pretty," "scary," and "monumentally fucked up" on a bad day, but Cloud as he is right this second is probably the most frightening thing that's ever walked in here.</p><p>Which would explain why he has a stool in between him and the rest of Tifa's patrons.  And why that stool is the only empty one at the bar.</p><p>Yuffie digs in a pocket, palming about ten gil by the feel of it, and settles down next to Cloud.  She leans forward enough to drop the coins in front of her.  They wobble and clink, glinting softly in the light, and catch Tifa's attention, judging from the way her head is suddenly turned toward Yuffie.</p><p>Beside her, Cloud doesn't so much as twitch.  She can't even tell if he tensed up a little at the intrusion; he's too hunched.</p><p>It takes a seriously mighty effort not to poke him in the ribs.  But that would probably get her chopped into fish bait, so she'd rather —</p><p>Wait, does that sign say eggs and chips?</p><p>Tifa is in front of her.  The smile on her face is polite and welcoming, and her eyes sparkle with good humor, but there's a slight reserve.  It hides really well, but it's there in the slight tightness at the corner of Tifa's eyes.</p><p>Yuffie grins and makes full eye contact.  "If I ask for a hotwire, are you gonna make me a cheap forsythia?"</p><p>"Oh, you'll get your hotwire," Tifa replies.  She tips her head to one side, evidently thawing a very little, and says,  "You look like a mogfruit juice kind of girl to me."</p><p>Interestingly, Cloud stirs at the sound of Tifa's voice.  He lifts his head enough to look at her.  There's a moment as he eyeballs them both, as if determining what's going on, and then he ducks his head again, retreating back inside whatever the hell he's got going on right now.  And Tifa flicks her gaze over him, her concern slipping past her placid bartender face.</p><p>So, the brain problems are still there.  Great.</p><p>She ignores the interplay between them in order to shrug kind of expansively.  It nearly leaves her fingertips touching the patron on her right, but she curls her fingers inward just in time.</p><p>"I mean I'm not gonna <i>rule out</i> mixing cinnamon sugar and hot sauce, but it's been kind of a long day."</p><p>"If it's been that long, how about I just warm you up some milk."</p><p>Oh, look, there's the crack about her age.  Joy.</p><p>"Uh, no thanks, doesn't agree with me.  I can't even have that Mideelian cream stuff.  If you're worried about my sleep, though..."  Yuffie draws out the silence, waggling her eyebrows, and then asks, "You wouldn't happen to know of an inn where the bedbugs don't have fleas and nobody'll yoink my shit?"</p><p>That gets an actual, honest-to-Leviathan laugh out of Tifa.  It's high and delicate, with this little unladylike snort at the very end, and it gets the attention of everyone around.</p><p>As happy as it makes her to make one of her best friends laugh, she could have done without that attention.  Now people are going to remember her.  Hopefully as nothing more than a short, dark-haired newcomer with money to burn, but if she's unlucky somebody's gonna spot the Four Point and the hitai-ate on her forehead and start putting numbers together.</p><p>"You're new in town, I take it," Tifa says.  "Yeah, I can recommend a place.  You're sure on that hotwire?"</p><p>"I'm sure," she replies, and drops another couple of gil on the bartop.</p><p>At that, Tifa shrugs.  She sweeps the gil into her apron, leaving one out, and pulls out a tumbler — an old fashioned, the part of Yuffie's brain that helped out at Seventh Heaven in Edge whispers — and carefully lining the rim with cinnamon sugar.  She pours in orange juice, layers a sniff of limoncello over it, then finishes off with a double-fisted drizzle of mogfruit juice and vodka.  Ta-da, the hotwire: basically a screwdriver, with a spicy lemon kick.  Also something she could probably use to clean out a carburetor, because that's how Rocket Town does drinks.</p><p>Possibly because she's been smelling grasslands and chocobo and slum all day, the scent that rises off her glass is heavenly.  Yuffie pushes the gil coin Tifa left out toward her, then picks up the drink.  Her whole body relaxes, like the smell of something Tifa made for her is some kind of "you're safe now, everything is fine" signal.</p><p>That's not even a little bit true right now, of course.  But she can't help noticing that Cloud stirs again, inspecting her and her booze, though from a distance.  Like a wary dog, maybe.</p><p>And then somebody calls Tifa away, and Cloud retreats again.  Yuffie uses the time to sip her drink and hunch in a little herself.  She knows how to pull herself inwards, how to project not just apathy but absence, but it's been a long time since she had to do it in public.</p><p>Normally she just pretends to be a wall or something.  Right now she's got to figure out how to pretend to be… well, no, not Cloud.  Vincent, maybe.  Or Cid on a bad night.  She drops her eyes and hunches her shoulders.</p><p>That's the posture.  Now for the subtle tension in her hands, but not her face, and to make sure her eyes aren't all that focused, without looking unfocused from a distance.</p><p>Really good thing she ordered a drink with no ice, no fancy garnishes except the sugar.  The last thing she needs is noise drawing people's thoughts toward her.</p><p>Listen, she reminds herself.  You are not important; what you want to know is important.  Slowly, slowly, Yuffie fades.  And the people around her start to talk.  Not about AVALANCHE, but the anti-Shinra grumbling starts. Even here, they're a little careful about it.</p><p>But it's not like Yuffie's never heard carefully non-seditious rumblings before. Maybe not from the old folks and not so widespread, but still.  It's familiar.</p><p>She finishes her hotwire.  The noise of her setting the glass back on the bartop draws Cloud's attention.  He stares at her intently, like she's evidence, or possibly a bug in a magnifying glass.  Like, judging by the expression on his face — what expression there is, it isn't exactly like he's a barrel of emotional openness — he's trying to evaluate her as a potential threat, maybe, or just a weird thing that's hanging out near him, without any understanding that she is, like, a person.</p><p>Was he like this in Mideel?  Damn, there's a question.</p><p>As if she psychically senses that her favorite brain-damaged science experiment has stopped frothing merrily to himself and is instead considering breaking a customer, Tifa heads back over.  She smiles as she looks at Yuffie's empty drink, but her eyes flick over to Cloud.</p><p>Good to know Tifa has at least <i>some</i> sense when it comes to him.  </p><p>Not that she reveals any of what's going on to Yuffie.  Instead, she turns that gentle warmth on her and says, "That it for you?"</p><p>"Yeah, I think I'm done.  It's been, y'know, kind of a day."</p><p>That draws another smile out of Tifa, a real one — not one of those polite "customer service" expressions — like water from a hole in the ground.  Because she's an idiot, because she's gone soft, because she's known these morons for basically her whole adult life, Yuffie warms up inside seeing it.</p><p>"I hear that," is all Tifa says, but her eyes flick over to Cloud again.</p><p>Yuffie turns just enough that she can full on look at him.  "What, you mean you and boyfriend over here haven't spent the day yukking it up?  And he's been such a sparkling conversationalist.  I'm shocked."</p><p>Tifa blushes.  The stripe of red across her cheeks is fierce, looks almost hot enough to hurt.  "He's not my boyfriend!  And it's… it's not bad that he's quiet."</p><p>"Guess not.  A guy who knows how to tell a joke would go a long way to putting people more at ease, though."  Yuffie shrugs.  "But, hey, what do I know, I just had to sit next to the guy for like, five minutes.  Honestly, he's not even that creepy.  These idiots on my right?  Total cowards."  On those last three comments, she raises her voice loud enough to be heard over the jukebox and the rest of the room.</p><p>Cid has this trick that she's pretty sure he learned in Kalm, where he doesn't <i>yell</i>, he just drops his pitch down into his ankles and opens his mouth up like a cathedral and breathes all his words out from his belly.  He yells all the time, too, of course, but when he's getting pointed, he just projects more somehow, and manages to yell without <i>sounding</i> like he's yelling.</p><p>Turns out Yuffie's an ace at talking from her belly and opening her mouth wide.  That came out, like, a bajillion times louder than she'd intended, and she kind of frowns to herself.  Conversations stop where they are as people go still, except for the people at the bar who are sitting to Yuffie's right.</p><p>Those people shuffle in their seats.  Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees a few of them looking her way with real anger at being called cowards.  Shit.</p><p>Well, if you don't like the look of 'down,' the only ways out are 'over' and 'through.'  For once in her life, Yuffie picks 'through.'</p><p>She raises her arms in a shrug again, flattening her hands out.  "I mean, just saying, I'm the shortest person in this bar, and I'm stuck next to the guy made out of, like, spikes and glaring.  Cowards.  Treat him like a person, maybe?"</p><p>The guy next to her swats irritably at her hands and mumbles something slurred, but he's being surprisingly chill about it for a drunk guy.  It's totally because of the smooth jazz that's playing in the background, she bets.</p><p>Cloud has gone back to watching her.  As if it takes a little while for the words to filter in through his ears to his brain and start meaning things, his eyes start to narrow a few seconds later.</p><p>"Oh my god," Tifa says, and puts her face in both her hands.  "Oh my god."</p><p>"My work here is done," is Yuffie's reply.  She grins easily and stands from her stool.</p><p>Through her hands, Tifa says, "The item shop has a spare bed.  Tell him Tifa sent you."  It's not <i>quite</i> a 'please leave,' but there's no way she's not feeling that.</p><p>So Yuffie goes, whistling, and waits to count her shiny new pocket change until she's actually out of the bar this time.</p><p>What?  You can take the girl out of time, you can drop the girl into the closest thing on Gaia to her own personal hell, you can take away all of her materia, but, as Barret would put it, ain't nobody taking no ninja out of this girl.</p>
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